An incident

October 13, 2014

W. Jackson Bate relates an episode from the life of Dr Johnson, drawing on the memoirs of Frances Reynolds, sister of Johnson’s friend Joshua Reynolds:

“An incident occurred shortly afterward — again at the Miss Cotterells’ — which both Reynolds and his sister thought amusingly characteristic. While Johnson was following some ladies upstairs on this visit, the housemaid, noticing his shabby dress, seized him by the shoulder and tried to pull him back, exclaiming, “Where are you going?” Startled into shame and anger, Johnson roared out like a bull, “What have I done?” Meanwhile a gentleman behind him quieted the maid, and Johnson “growled all the way up stairs, as well he might.”

Already chagrined, he became more offended when two ladies of rank suddenly arrived (the Duchess of Argyle and Lady Fitzroy), and the Miss Cotterells, engrossed in their titled visitors, neglected to introduce him or Reynolds. Inferring that this was because they were ashamed of him and Reynolds as “low company,” he sat for a while in silent meditation and then, “resolving to shock their supposed pride,” called out to Reynolds in a loud voice, “I wonder which of us two could get most money by his trade in one week, were we to work hard at it from morning to night.”